Our trip to Venice offered the opportunity to experience a number of things. Great art, wonderful food, spectacular buildings and a palpable sense of history.

I have two individuals whose work and life I have been keenly interested in Charles Darwin and Dante, okay a bit of a contrast but whatever. So I was really ecstatic one foggy morning to see the Venetian Arsenal the site of so much of the naval power of the Venetian Republic at the height of it's power. It was also the subject of a metaphor in Dante's Inferno, so for me to see it was to experience both history and literature.

"The image of the busy shipyard with its activity revolving around a vat of viscous pitch establishes the tone for this canto (and the next) as one of tense and excited movement. Also we once again see Dante imitating the action with his language: the busy syntax reflects the activity of the shipyard"

from the notes to Mark Musa's translation of the Inferno (probably my favourite)

"The Arsenal at Venice ( built in 1104 and greatly enlarged in 1303-4 and 1325 ) was one of the most important shipyards in Europe in Dante's time. About two miles in perimeter, it was enclosed within high walls surmounted by battlements and flanked by towers. See F.C. Lane (1934) ,pp. 129-31"

My other blogs

" The sun is axeman among dry
Slashings: he would clear
Kindling from the rocky hills "

Blue Jay in Haliburton
D.G. Jones
* * * * *

HandHills

"A little while and I will be gone from among you," he said. "Whither, I cannot tell. From nowhere we came; into nowhere we go. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Isapo-Muxika, Crowfoot, Blackfoot Chief

"Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both... We seek to establish a narrow line between ourselves and the feathery zeros we dare to call angels, but ask a partition barrier of infinite width to show the rest of creation its proper place. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bears days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain....." - John Muir

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not bretheren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the Earth." —-

The Outermost House

Henry Beston

Wendolene 10/14/12

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you musttake care of what has been given. Brush her hair, help herinto her little coat, hold her hand, especially when crossing a street. For, think,what if you should lose her? from Love SorrowMary Oliver

About Me: Guy

Interests

This blog will comment on my interests, poetry, art, music, nature, evolution, science fiction, roses, dinosaurs, dogs, Darwin, Lovecraft, Godzilla and the Wind in the Willows which provided the name of this blog.